Column: Job experience without the experience

I once wore a blue vest over my shirt with a plastic nametag affixed above my heart.

I worked for an early iteration of the big-box building supply stores that you see these days across America. It was 50 years ago, and I was at the cutting edge of the big-box revolution.

Did they know what they were getting when they hired me? Obviously not.

I was a junior in college and a U.S. Army vet, and I wore the vest and nametag for over a year. I worked nights and weekends in the paint department.

Ugh, the poor souls that purchased paint from me.

The year was 1969, and I suppose the building supply store thought they were getting a good deal when I told them I’d spent my sophomore year (my first year out of the military) working part-time for Standard Brands Paint Co. What I’d neglected to mention was that I’d been fired.

Well, not exactly fired. The store manager was a great guy — a former Marine — and I liked him a lot. He liked me, too, and regularly gave me sage advice. I always listened.One day he said, “Jim, you’re a student … and a good student. But you’re no paint salesman.” (Pregnant pause.)

He was right. I had the lowest sales figures of any employee in the store. I could take a hint.

I resigned.

I applied at a building supply store closer to Cal State Fullerton the summer before my junior year. With my experience at the paint store, the Fullerton big-box hired me on the spot.

“You’ve never painted a wall in your life,” my dad told me at the time.

That came from a guy who loved to paint. It was his hobby. Dad routinely painted every room in our house every three years. He had a rotation system, and he knew paint like I knew the lyrics of Lesley Gore’s greatest hits.

He would take vacation days just to paint.

“You’re right, Dad,” I conceded, “I pretty much have a zero aptitude for painting, but the customers don’t know that.”

I dazzled clients with a well-rehearsed repartee.

I recommended interior and exterior paints; high gloss, semi-gloss and flat paints; rollers, brushes, sandpaper, steel wool and pans; paint sprayers; paint thinner; putty; wood stain; shellac; paint-stripper; wallpaper, you name it.

I was Mr. Expert; except that I wasn’t. I’d never used one of those products.

My apologies to those who purchased supplies from me. You deserved better.

The big-box’s paint department consisted of several aisles along the back wall. It was about as far from the store manager’s office — near the checkout counters — as one could get without leaving the premises.

I took full advantage.

Business was often slow, so I’d hide out in my department and become the Phantom. I’d rearrange paint cans on the shelves, or into circular stacks on the floor. I’d often pull a gallon from the shelf and stick it on the electric paint shaker just to appear to be doing something. Anything to avoid being sent to the stockroom where heavy objects awaited lifting and hauling.

I did everything I could to stay out of the line of fire … and counted the minutes until closing.

Every now and then I’d be called to Housewares or to the Garden Shop to help a customer. My expertise in paint was negligible, but even less so in housewares and gardening. I was an impostor.

Saturday and Sunday mornings the store opened at 9 a.m., and I had to be there at 8:30. I couldn’t believe that customers actually gathered in front of the store waiting for the doors to open.

“Don’t you people have something better to do?” I’d mumble as I walked in from my car. “Like, sleep?”

I made myself a promise: “I’m never, ever going to stand in front of a store before opening.”

I never have.

BTW: My final year in college I worked at Sears. They didn’t trust me in paint so I sold diamonds and watches.

Sadly, I couldn’t tell a chronometer from a caulking gun.

JIM CARNETT, who lives in Costa Mesa, worked for Orange Coast College for 37 years.